Feel Something

Chapter 4: Count on Me

Before Darcy could react, Loki's grip on her wrist tightened as he jerked her down the hall and into her bedroom, noiselessly closing the door behind them. He pressed her against the door with a hand clamped over her mouth, the other clinging painfully to her wrist which still held the stolen latke.

With a wicked grin, Loki slowly released her wrist, bringing his finger to his lips in the universal sign for quiet. At Darcy's eye roll and nod of understanding, Loki removed his other hand from her mouth, but he did not move from his tense position, continuing to trap her between him and the door as he cocked his head to listen to the events outside of the room.

"What's going on here?" Jane's muffled voice resounded over the cacophony of shuffling feet and cocking guns.

"Miss Foster, I'm Agent Coulson with SHIELD." This new voice had a calm quality that felt extremely out of place given the circumstances.

"Is that supposed to mean something to me?"

Darcy could make out the low resonance of Erik saying something placating to Jane, but couldn't quite make out the words. Does he know these people?

"We're investigating a security threat. Where is the man who calls himself Loki Odinson?"

Needing no further confirmation that he was the target of these invaders, Loki pulled away from Darcy at last, making his way across the room toward the window that overlooked miles of barren New Mexico desert behind the lab. It didn't take him long to undo the locking mechanism, slide it open, and pop out the screen. With one leg already out the window, Loki seemed to hesitate for a moment before looking back at Darcy.

Unsure what exactly he wanted from her, Darcy only nodded reassuringly. He was gone before she had a chance to do more than that. Good luck finding somewhere to hide out in the middle of nowhere, dude, Darcy worried to herself as she turned to exit the room, Time for some damage control, I guess.

Opening her bedroom door, Darcy nearly walked right into two black-clad, heavily armed men preparing to knock it down. When they pushed past her with firearms at the ready, Darcy internally patted herself on the back for taking the time to replace the screen and shut the window, after her new acquaintance's impromptu exit.

"Dude, you guys mind? This is my room," Darcy feigned stunned irritation as she stormed out into the main part of the lab. There were similarly outfitted men and women everywhere, most of them also heavily armed and looking ready for a drug raid. The only one not dressed for a sting op was a middle-aged, balding man in a clean-cut suit who was currently engaging in a heated conversation with Jane. Well, Jane was heated—Mr. Suit was as calm as if he were giving a college lecture.

"What's going on, Jane?" Darcy interrupted, acting oblivious in hopes that Jane hadn't already mentioned Loki, "I go to the bathroom for five minutes and you let the mafia in? Wanna warn a girl?"

Jane turned to Darcy, relief evident in her eyes as she took in Loki's absence, "These guys are supposedly looking for the man we dropped at the hospital last night, but they seem a lot more interested in stealing all of my work—careful, that took me weeks to build!"

"Jane, let it go," Erik cut in.

"Let it go? This is my life!"

It broke Darcy's heart to see all of Jane's—all of their hard work being cleared out without their consent. They had been burning up in the desert for weeks already, and that was just the part of Jane's research Darcy had been around for. This had been Jane's passion project for years.

"As I already told you, Miss Foster, we require your records and atmospheric data to further research a threat to national security. Here, this should more than compensate you for your trouble."